Topic: Games you've recently beat

@HallowMoonshadow Thanks. I know it is a smart decision because I came up with it. At least I waited to have my smart decision for the month until late in the month. lol

I'm not going to criticize that stance as I get it, but it seems like the Cold Steel games are the main culprits in Falcom's catalog. I know I didn't experience anything like that in Ys VIII, with just a sexual joke or two at Laxia's expense being perfectly innocent. I'm guessing things aren't too bad in the Crossbell trilogy either (I haven't read about many problems in them at least).

I've thought that for a while, since the Sky games are hardly well-written. There's weird incest fetishism. The first game progresses at a snail's pace. The second one is ultra-formulaic and features pretty generic anime bad guys. The character writing is pretty heavily tropey as well.

All the claims of "good writing" seem to be connected to the extreme serialization from game to game, like in basically every long-running story-heavy TV show. If anything, I'm more impressed with games that don't need fifteen RPGs to build up interesting character dynamics and complex politics-heavy plotlines.

The Ys games are so underappreciated, man. They manage to have a consistent world across the entire series would requiring players to play each entry in order. While the stories aren't amazing, they're also devoid of all the problematic sexual assault and homophobia so far that seems to pass for characterization in the Trails series. The absolute worst thing I've seen in the four games I've played to date is the main character stumbling in on someone naked and getting smacked, and that scene is over and done with pretty much immediately. The games also don't bore you with hours and hours of needless dialogue, preferring to get you back into the action ASAP.

GTA V. Oh feels so nice that after a couple of weeks of consistent playing having beat the story plus some side content. Iam not sure why but I almost feel kind of overwhelmed to a degree.. I think it must have something do with that GTA V is a game that have that I have wanted to play and beat for some time but not really got into until a few weeks ago. Always prioritizing some other game. Its strange, but very nice feeling.

Incest, e.g. in the case of ToCS a relationship between an older brother and younger sister, is fairly common in Japanese media. Another example at the top of my head would be Sword Art Online. I think things like this and other stuff we deem inappropriate in the West are more acceptable in Japan. I'd be more shocked if I saw stuff like this in Western media in all honesty. But I've come to accept that Japan simply has a different culture and this is just how things are over there. I'm sure there are Japanese people who find us Westerners weird for numerous reasons.

I've also come to the realisation that the more games I play, the more formulaic I perceive the games. For every 100 games I play, maybe 5-10 titles stand out to me. We just do the same things over and over in games nowadays. Doesn't mean it's not fun though.

It's hard to get attached to games and their worlds if you don't spend a lot of time with them. That's why I love long games like Persona 4 Golden and Trails of Cold Steel.

You mention long-running story-heavy TV shows. I'm currently watching The Walking Dead and that show is very formulaic. The same thing happens in most seasons. The reason why I still watch it though is because I love The Walking Dead universe, the characters, the plot twists and so on. I vastly prefer a show like The Walking Dead over something like Chernobyl or any other short show. It's just so hard to care about characters when you haven't known them for long. I mean, they're showing off scenes from the early seasons in the final season of The Walking Dead and I'm getting teary-eyed because I've been following the show since I was in high school. Imagine getting teary-eyed from a show like The Walking Dead, lol.

@Ralizah The thing that’s different about the writing in the trials games is how broad it is. If you talk to the same NPC on a different day they will say something different that’s in line with who they are. In contrast, something like Final Fantasy, 7 crisis core if you talk to the same NPC in a different chapter they will say exactly the same thing, unless they give you a quest.

It’s different from branching narrative, or a good main story. But it certainly an example of good writing.

@Ralizah With respect to the difference between Sky and Cold Steel, I don’t really remember much creepy stuff between Agate and Tita cause y’know she was like 12 and he was a full grown man. Let’s just say that changes when they reappear in the series. Like to Agate’s credit he looks visibly uncomfortable when literally every other character tells him he should bone the child but man, who the hell writes these games? I swear, with every game it feels like they can sneak a bit more of their own fetishes into the series. All it’s missing now is for the female characters to have visible green fart clouds like Shrek.

@Ralizah That would be Adol stumbling in on Laxia while she was wrapped in a towel after a bath. That scene I thought was amusing at least since there was an innocence to it to an extent.

I will likely never bother with the Cold Steel games now after reading all of this, but does the Crossbell trilogy at least keep the issues to more of a minimum than the Cold Steel games do? They are supposed to be excellent games (at least Zero and Azure for sure) , so I would still like to play them.

@KilloWertz Azure has one scene of the whole ‘haha sexual assault’ variant with the same character as in Cold Steel 3 but personally I didn’t find it quite as disturbing perhaps due to the lack of detail in the graphics. The harem elements are less in your face but then I went with the hinted canon romance so I’m not sure if it changes on that front. Most importantly, there’s a genuinely good story amongst all that and it makes it a lot easier to overlook other stuff. I’d probably notice more that was a bit iffy on a replay because I was more engrossed in the story and could skip over the crap in favour of the good stuff.

@nessisonett Thanks. I'll just stick to my plan then and play the Crossbell trilogy at some point then. Given everything that comes out and an obvious backlog, I doubt I ever would have been able to get around the the Cold Steel games anyways, especially since I would much prefer to play the other Ys games that are available on PS4 (and eventually PS5 with IX) after loving Ys VIII.

Beat Metroid Prime Remastered. Such a great game, with the remaster hitting that perfect mark of looking as good as a modern game. Still hate the final boss though.

@nessisonett Hopefully the high level of technical quality in MPR bodes well for MP4. Clearly they can maintain 60fps and still make the game look nice on the hardware.

@Ralizah It might just be the fidelity of the screen hiding imperfections but I honestly couldn’t notice many differences at all between handheld and docked mode. Nintendo are just wizards when it comes to utilising their own hardware, I’ve played too many third-party games that look as if they’ve got Vaseline smeared across them.

@nessisonett I've been pretty happy with how most of my Switch games look, but I'm also sticking mostly to exclusives and smaller third party games and play primarily on the tablet. I thought the OLED model's larger screen would make games look blurrier, but that really hasn't been the case to date.

Probably also helps that I don't have a next-gen console to compare it with.

Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch)

Mission Accepted

• My first time playing a Prime game, it successfully transitions the formula into the 3rd dimension. The biggest difference between it and the 2D entries is that while those have been evolving to be more quick & action-y, this has a more deliberate, almost puzzle like feel (heck, there's a big plant boss early on that feels very much "traditional 3D Zelda" in it's approach).
• One of these changes is that instead of beam upgrades "stacking" on top of each other making you progressively more powerful, here they are separate equips. While newer beams are generally more efficient at taking out early/mid game enemies than what came before (helping with backtracking), late game areas tend to be populated with foes weak to a specific one, requiring you to switch things up encounter to encounter.
• Another addition that's possible due to the first person perspective is the addition of visor upgrades. While you start out with the standard "battle visor" (your basic view) & "scan visor" (lets you collect data on enemy types & the environment), as you get further in you'll obtain the "thermal visor" (see in the dark & more easily track cloaked enemies) & "x-ray visor" (lets you see what can't otherwise be seen, usually environmental elements like secret paths). These really play into the more deliberate pace of the game.
  
  
• One area where the game really uses the extra dimension to it's advantage is the morph ball sections. These are much more involved than anything you'll see in the 2D games, and I'll admit my jaw kinda dropped a few times, like the section that opens up right before a late game beam upgrade.
  
• I also liked the fact that most of the upgrades seemed to be behind puzzles that were more deliberately built into the environment, rather than just behind a random destructible wall (even though there is some of that). Usually you can tantalizingly see an upgrade, or at least tell there's an environmental puzzle that's clearly hiding something, and it's just up to you to figure out how to obtain it.
• If I had to nitpick, there would be a few changes I'd make to the map. Firstly, I'd have any upgrades that you've scanned be marked on the map until you collect them. Secondly, have some sort of general indicator if a room has an upgrade you haven't collected, even if you haven't scanned it (this can be more vague, not giving away precise location). The 2D games already do the latter, marking the map with a dot if there's an upgrade in the general area.
• Pretty gorgeous game too, I think I'm just going to let these following screenshots do the talking.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with it, even if I got lost a time or two. I think I prefer the more action-y direction the 2D games are starting to take, but I can only imagine how seminal this must have felt back in the day, given that they nailed the 3D transition the first time out, & with really only Super Metroid beforehand being a good example of the franchise. Glad I finally got to experience it.

Mission Complete.

Beat AM2R for the first time, pretty good for a fan thing. Just as good as Samus Returns in all honesty. Only issue for me is the absolutely horrible hitboxes on the Metroids. Considering it’s a Metroid genocide simulator, that’s a big part of the game. Still decent.

I really need to play some short games. The games I have beaten so far in 2023 are:

01 Bloodborne + Old Hunters (40 hours or whatever)
02 The Innsmouth Case (rubbish and short visual novel, 5 hours)
03 Ten Dates (reviewed, short movie game, 2 hours or so)
04 Wild Hearts (45 hours)
05 Like A Dragon Ishin (100% for the Platinum, 150 hours)
06 The Witcher 3 + both DLCs (130 hours)
edit: 6 1/2 - I forgot about Fatal Frame whatever it was I reviewed. That was like 15 hours or something.
07 Persona 5 Royal (Platinum, 180 hours)
08 Persona 4 Golden (92 hours)
09 Elden Ring (new game plus, nearly all bosses and caves and everything, 100 hours)

Just beat Advance Wars (the first one) via the Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp remake last night. I say "beat" and not "complete" because there's a bunch of stuff left to do just in that campaign, let alone the sequel, or all the war room stuff.

For the most part, I'm pretty happy with WayForward's update of this game. It's snappy, the writing (while similar) is even funnier in spots, it looks beautiful on the OLED (especially CO power activation animations and cutscenes), and they made a few smart QoL changes that make the game that much easier to play.

@nessisonett AM2R is seriously impressive. Really wish the dev would have gone the Axiom Verge route and just made something Metroid-esque, instead of a literal fan remake that they can't monetize or officially release anywhere.

Last of Us 2. I think the game was basically the game I expected the first Last of Us game to be, which is not to say little. I think the game improves on the original in basically every way. It feels like a much better and more ambitious game in every way compared to the first game in the series. I think it was a delightful experience to say the least. I think its one of the more well made games I have played.

@Ralizah You know, a lot of it did remind me of Axiom Verge, especially the tilesets as you get deeper into the planet. I get that they’re just updates of the Metroid 2 tiles but there’s a sorta ethereal quality to them, much like the bubbly weird textures in a lot of Axiom Verge.

Nice to hear that Advance Wars is worth it as well, my younger brother’s saving up for it just now as he’s played Dual Strike about 12 times but never played the first two. Worryingly, he’s also younger than Dual Strike.

@nessisonett It'll especially be worth it to someone who hasn't played the games before. The online multiplayer implementation sucks (needless to say, this won't be replacing Advance Wars By Web), but that's my only major complaint about it. Some people don't like the plastic-y aesthetic units have on the maps, but I'm pretty sure that was an intentional part of the board game aesthetic WF was going for.

One change I really like is that the game doesn't lock you onto routes as you play through the game, instead giving you a choice at any point in the campaign where the route would have different levels in the original. And after you beat the game the first time, it just unlocks those alternate levels for you.

Additionally, unlocking additional COs outside of the campaign has been streamlined: they become available in the store after their respective arcs in the campaign, and you use your in-game coins/winnings from battles to unlock them.

I'm sure some people will say this reduces replayability, but I don't want to have to play through the game countless times just to unlock everything. It's not like the game doesn't already have levels ranks/hard mode/extra levels/an unlockable super hard level + a ton of war room maps that become available in the in-game store anyway.

It also has a turn rewind feature. At first I was afraid they meant some sort of Divine Pulse/Mila's Turnwheel BS, but no, it only allows you to rewind to the beginning of the current turn you're in, so it's useful if you move a unit to the wrong place or something.

The remixed music is awesome as well.

Unless you've just played these campaigns to death (I've only played the first one two times over the years, and never touched the sequel), this feels like a fairly essential purchase for the system if you're an AW fan.